Sunday, July 18, 2010

Heartless - Chapter 1

"Do you think they will come before the year is out?" Princess Una asked her nurse.

"Who will come?" her nurse replied.

"Suitors, of course!"

Though the sun was bright, the air blew chill through the open window that spring morning, and Una wrapped a shawl around her shoulders as she sat waiting for Nurse to finish the awful business of preparing her for the day. Nurse, who had long since ceased to function as a real nurse and these days played the part of maid and busybody to her princess, wielded a brush with the tenderness of a gardener raking last year's dead leaves, making every effort to tame Una's honey-colored hair into an acceptable braid. One would have expected that, with many years' practice, she might have acquired rather more gentleness. Not so Nurse.

She paused now, mid-tug, and scowled at Una's reflection in the glass. "What brings on this fool talk?" She raised a bushy eyebrow and gave the braid an extra tug, as though to wrest all the unruliness out of it in one go. "You keep your mind busy with your lessons and deportment, just as always, and leave that messy business of courting and arranging marriages to your father, as is right."

"But I'm of age!" Una winced again and tried not to pull away from the vicious brush. She twisted her mouth into an unattractive shape as pain shot through her scalp. "Papa always said that he wouldn't accept a single inquiry from a single prince or single dignitary in a single realm of the whole Continent until I came of age."

"As is right."

"Well, now that I'm eighteen, shouldn't he start receiving them? When will they come to pay their respects?" To pay their respects, according to the definition given the phrase by the courtiers of Oriana Palace, was a tactful way to say, investigate marriage possibilities with the resident princess.

"That's not for you to be speculating, Miss Princess," said Nurse. She pronounced it "speckle-ating." Una dared not laugh. Though Nurse had not been brought up to speak an elegant dialect, her ideas on what was and was not proper behavior for a princess went far beyond anything Una had ever learned from her decorum instructors.

"Suitors indeed! Why, in my day, a girl never put two thoughts together concerning a boy—not till her father gave her the go-ahead."

"Never?"

"Not once!"

"Not even when—"

Nurse whapped the top of Una's head with the back of the brush. "No more! There, you're tidy as mortal hands can make you. Get you gone to your morning tutorials, and I don't want to hear another word of this romantic drivel!"

Rubbing the top of her head, Una gathered herself up, grabbed an armload of books, and made her way to her chamber doors, muttering, "I like romantic drivel." She stepped from the room and, just as the door swung shut behind her, called over her shoulder, "Your day was a singularly unromantic one, Nurse!"

Una glared at the closed door. A demanding "Meeeowl?" at her feet drew her gaze, and she looked down at her cat, Monster, who sat before her, his tail curled elegantly about his paws. He seemed to smile all over his furry face, despite his lack of eyes.

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Don't look so smug."

With that, she turned on her heel and marched down the corridor, the blind cat trotting behind, unlike a dog in every way because, of course, he wasn't truly following her. He merely happened to be going her way.

"Nothing in life is as romantic as it should be, Monster," Una said as they made their way along the white hall and down a graceful staircase. She nodded civil acknowledgements to members of the household who greeted her as she passed. "Here I am, a princess, of age to be courted and married, and where am I? On my way to another history lesson! Then there'll be a tutorial on the proper ways to address ambassadors from Beauclair as opposed to dignitaries from Shippening. Then dancing. And not a single respects-paying gentleman of certain birth as far as the eye can see." She sighed at the heaviness of the world. "Nothing ever changes, Monster."

"Meeaa?" the cat said.

Una looked down her nose at him. "You're not just saying that, are you? Trying to make me feel better?"

"Meeaa."

"I knew it." She sighed again. "Someday, Monster, won't you express an original idea? For me?"

Felix waited for her in the large but nonetheless stuffy classroom they shared, doodling caricatures of their tutor in the margins of an essay he was supposed to be composing. He scarcely looked up when Una entered. Monster took a moment to rub a cheek against the young prince's knee before dodging Felix's backhand and arranging himself on the windowsill to catch the sunlight.

Una took a seat and opened her book just as the tired-eyed tutor shuffled in. He fortified himself behind his desk, attached a pair of spectacles in place—which made his eyes seem still more tired—and looked upon his students with the air of a man resigned to his fate.

"At what are you so diligently working, Prince Felix?" he asked. His voice never varied from a mournful drone.

Felix held up his essay full of doodles.

The tutor winced. "Most amusing, Your Highness."

"See how big I made the nose on this one?"

"A remarkable likeness, Your Highness."

"Doesn't look a thing like him," Una said.

Felix made a face. "Not supposed to. This one's you."

The tutor closed his eyes during the ensuing argument and let the storm pass. When at last calm returned, he slowly creaked his eyelids back up and dared face the world again. "Prince Felix, do you recall at what passage we left off our reading yesterday?"

"I do," Una said.

"He was talking to me!"

She continued, "We were studying the rise of Corrilond in the year of the Sleeper's Awakening during the reign of King Abundiantus IV—"

"Know-it-all!"

The tutor shoved his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. It was a day like all others, a mirror of yesterday and a foretelling of tomorrow: The prosperous sameness and drudging boredom of lives placidly spent proceeding as endlessly as the mind could conceive. Nothing ever really changed, and as far as anyone in Oriana Palace could surmise, nothing ever would.

But then, something did.

***

For two hundred years they had not been seen.

They first appeared as deeper shadows among the shadows of the Wood, all staring eyes and sniffing noses, as wary as children dipping a toe in deep water, fearful to take a dive.

Then one stepped forth, and he, with a smile, beckoned to the others. A huge creature with eyes as wide and white as the moon and skin like craggy rocks followed with a strange grace of movement; behind him walked another who was black as a shadow but whose eyes shone like the sky. After these came the others. Out of the Wood they streamed in parade—carrying with them the scent of dusk, the sound of dawn—and they arranged themselves upon the lawn outside the walls of the city of Sondhold, in the shadow of Goldstone Hill.

A shepherd boy saw them first. His heart leapt with fear at the sight, though not because of their strangeness, for such strangeness he had witnessed a thousand times in dreams. Rather, he feared that he dreamed them now and that, as soon as his old dad caught him snoozing at his watch, he'd fetch a hiding and perhaps be sent to bed without supper. So he pinched himself, and when that did not work, he pinched himself again.

His lazy flock all lifted their heads, regarded the oncoming throng a moment, and then returned to their grazing. But the quick-eyed herding dog let out a joyous bark and left the shepherd, left the flock, and ran to greet the strangers as though welcoming long-lost friends.

Then the boy jumped up and ran as well, shouting as he went. But he ran the opposite direction, down the dusty path toward Sondhold. Though he had only ever seen them in dreams, he recognized those who came.

"The market! The market!" he cried. The guards at the gates let him through, calling derisively after him, but he paid them no mind. "The market!" he shouted, gathering too much speed so that he lost his balance and scraped the skin from his palms and knees. But he was up again in a flash, shouting all the louder. "The Twelve-Year Market is come from the Wood!"

The very oldest grandmama in all Sondhold could only just recall her old grandmama talking about her grandmama's visit to the Twelve-Year Market. Many families in the city boasted prized heirlooms, strange oddities handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, for generations. A silver spoon that never tarnished; a kettle that sang familiar old tunes when the water boiled; a mug that never let the tea grow cold; a pair of boots that, if polished with the right stuff, would carry a man seven leagues in a step—too bad the polish ran out ages ago. The items once purchased at the Twelve-Year Market were rare and wonderful indeed, items of Faerie make and ever so expensive. But the Twelve-Year Market was the stuff of stories.

Until it showed up on the lawn below Goldstone Hill that day in early spring, soon after Princess Una came of age.

A washerwoman hanging up her second load of the day to dry paused in her work, her wrinkled white fingers momentarily still as the shepherd boy ran by. "The Twelve-Year Market!" he bellowed as he went, and she dropped the clean shirt—dropped it right in the dust—brushed off her apron, and hitched up her skirts to hasten from the city, out to the green lawn.

The boy ran on, shouting, "The market! The market is come!"

Merchants by the docks closed up booths and locked away their wares.

"The market!" the shepherd boy cried.

The cobbler's wife and the baker's sister ceased their gossip, blinked startled eyes, and joined the merchants.

The boy went on, shouting until he was too hoarse to make himself heard, but by then his work was complete. The folks of Sondhold streamed through the gates: the washerwoman, the merchants, the cobbler's wife and her brood of children, even the guards who were supposed to stand at the gates. They all made their way down the dusty track from the city to the lawn below the hill. There they beheld the Faerie bazaar.

They stopped on the fringes, afraid to go forward.

The first to hail them was a man so incredibly ancient that his upper lip nearly reached his chin. His skin was like a walnut, and his eyes like acorn caps. A big black sow pulled his rickety cart, on which two enormous pots of alabaster hummed, as though some musical instrument played the same three notes again and again inside. Water sloshed as he lifted them down, and the city folk could hear the creak of every joint in his body, a crackling percussion accompanying the humming.

When he saw the gathering crowds his acorn-cap eyes winked twice, first with fear, then with a smile. "Come!" he cried, raising a gnarled hand, beckoning. "Come, folk of the Near World! Come inspect my wares! Unicorn fry, fresh from the sea, caught just this morning—or last century, depending on your view. Learning to sing; hear them for yourself! Come hear the sea unicorn young as they sing!"

The folk of Sondhold looked from him to each other, afraid to move closer, unwilling to leave.

Then the cobbler's wife took hold of her youngest son and strode boldly to the lawn, her chin set in defiance though the baker's sister called a warning to her. "I'd like a look," she told the old man with the acorn-cap eyes.

He grinned and lifted the lid of one jar. The strange humming filled the air, only three notes dancing in the ears of all those near, but the sweetest three notes ever played together.

The cobbler's wife stood on tiptoe to peer inside. "Coo!" she breathed. Then, "May I show the boy?"

The old man nodded, and she lifted her littlest one to peer into the alabaster jar. The child made a solemn inspection and finally declared, "Pretty."

"Unicorn fry!" the old man cried. "Caught fresh this morning! I'll sell them at a bargain, good dame, and you can raise one at home, hear sweet music every day!"

With that, the market truly opened. The crowd standing on the edges of the lawn could not bear to miss whatever wonders lay just before them, and they flooded in to inspect the hundred colorful stalls. The lawn below Goldstone Hill was suddenly as merry as a festival, as noisy as a circus, as frantic as a holiday. Music sang from all corners, outlandish music on outlandish instruments played by even more outlandish people. But although the songs were different, somehow they blended into each other in cheerful harmonies, often underscored by a low, melancholy tune that heightened the curiosity and the fun of those who browsed the many stalls.

Word spread fast. Soon all of Sondhold was bestirred. Working girls feigned sickness to be excused, and schoolboys made no pretense of attending classes. The washerwoman let the dirtied white shirt lie untouched, and the smithy allowed his fires to die. How could anyone attend to mundane things on the day of the Twelve-Year Market?

The hubbub bubbled all the way to the crest of Goldstone Hill and flowed on into the palace, where Princess Una sat with her nose in her history text, wallowing in academic misery. Dates and battles and dead kings' names swam before her eyes while spring fever, cruel and demanding, picked at the back of her brain. She and her brother had ceased their squabbling for the time being, and their tutor's voice filled the room in one long, endless drone that commanded no one's attention, least of all the tutor's.

Monster stood up on the windowsill. He stretched, forming an arch with his body, and flicked the plume of his tail. Then, after a quick wash to make certain his whiskers were well arranged, he interrupted the lecture.

"Meaaa."

The tutor droned on without a glance at the cat. "Abundiantus V was never intended to sit upon his father's throne, being the second son—"

"Meaaa!" Monster said, with more emphasis this time. He unsheathed his claws and scratched the window, a long grating noise.

"Dragon-eaten beast." Felix threw a pencil at the cat's nose, missing by inches.

"Princess Una," the tutor said, "we have had this discussion. Would you kindly remove that creature from the room so that our studies may continue uninhibited?"

Una huffed and went to the window. But when she reached for him, Monster made himself heavy and awkward, slipping through her grasp. He landed back on the windowsill with another "Meeeaa!" and pressed his nose to the glass.

Una looked out.

She saw the colors. She saw the movement. She saw the dancing far below, as though she was suddenly gifted with an eagle's eyes and able to discern every detail even at that great distance. Wonderingly, she opened the window, and music carried up Goldstone Hill and filled the room.

"Oh," she said.

"Meeeea." Monster looked smug.

Felix was on his feet and at her side in a moment. He too looked down. "Oh," he said.

The tutor, frowning, came around from behind his desk and joined them at the window. He looked as well and saw what they saw. His mouth formed an unspoken "Oh."

A clatter of hooves in the courtyard drew their gazes, however unwillingly, from the sight down the hill. Una and her brother saw their father, King Fidel, mounting up with a company of his guard around him. Brother and sister exchanged a glance and bolted for the door, falling over themselves in a headlong dash from the chamber, down the stairs, and out to the courtyard, heedless of the tutor's feeble attempts to restrain them. Monster trailed at their heels.

"Father!" Una burst into the courtyard, shouting like a little girl and hardly caring that she drew the eyes of the stable boys and footmen standing by. King Fidel, upon his gray mount, looked back at his daughter. "Father!" she cried. "Are you going to see?" She did not have to say what.

"Yes, Una," Fidel replied. "I must make certain all is well below."

"May we come?" Una said, and before the words were all out of her mouth, Felix was shouting to the stable boys, "My horse! Bring my horse!"

King Fidel considered a moment, his eyebrows drawn. But the day was fine, the air was full of holiday spirit, and his children's faces were far too eager to refuse. "Very well."

Una and Felix rode on either side of him as he descended the King's Way, the long road that wound down Goldstone Hill to the teeming lawn. The breath of the ocean whipped in their faces, carrying the spice of other worlds up from below.

Sheep left neglected trailed across the road as the riders came to the bottom of the hill. The animals trotted out of the way, lambs scurrying behind their mothers. Una saw a man leaving the market with a great embroidered rug over his shoulder, and children ran hither and yon eating golden apples. A juggler tumbled just in front of Felix's horse, tossing what at first looked like knives, but then seemed to be silver fish, and then, Una could have sworn, shooting stars. A dancer with eyes as large and wet as the moon on water, with pupils like a cat's, too strange to be either beautiful or ugly, twirled past trailing what could have been iridescent scarves or perhaps wings. A man with green-cast skin sprang alongside Una's mount and held up an empty hand. Flowers bloomed from his fingertips, and he smiled hugely, bobbing and bowing.

"Blossoms for the lovely lady? A fair price! Always fair! I do but ask for a strand of your hair. Is that not fair? A single strand of hair!"

Una urged her horse closer to her father's, uncertain whether or not to be frightened. But the green-cast man darted away into the crowds, shouting as he went, "Prices always fair! Blossoms to share!" She could hear his voice amid the din long after he vanished from sight.

Fidel's guards called out in large voices, heralding the king's arrival. But their words hardly carried over the music of the market, and the crowds did not part. The people of Sondhold, their eyes wide and wondering, scarcely spared a glance for their king or his children. King Fidel smiled as he looked around, for despite the noise and the otherworldliness of it all, it was impossible to remain unmoved by the wonders and the excitement. He called the captain of his guard to him and said, "Try to find out who is in charge here, will you?"

Before he had quite finished speaking, a path suddenly emerged in the crowds, and the most enormous person Una had ever seen stepped forward. He stood at least seven feet tall and was terribly ugly. He so exactly fit the image of a goblin she'd held since childhood that, at first sight of him, she felt all her limbs go atremble. But despite his craggy skin that looked as though it would turn sword blades and arrowheads, his face was welcoming.

He raised a hand and called a greeting to the king. "Fidel of Parumvir," he said, "welcome to the Twelve-Year Market."

Fidel raised an eyebrow and inclined his head, and because he was king he showed no sign of fear if he felt it. "And welcome to Parumvir, stranger," he said. "You make yourself quite free in my lands without so much as a by-your-leave." His voice was not unfriendly, but he spoke as a king not a friend. "What is your name?"

The goblin-man, now near enough for Una to see that he stood taller than the ears of her father's horse, bowed low. He was clothed all in white, with a golden belt and a long knife at his side. "I am Oeric," he said when he straightened, "knight in the service of the Prince of Farthestshore."

"Farthestshore?" Fidel repeated.

It was a name from ancient days, from tales so old they were no longer called history but relegated to legend; and even in legends, these tales were mentioned only as myths believed by heroes of long ago. Yet the name of Farthestshore was deeply imbedded in the earth of Parumvir and all the nations of the Continent. When she heard it spoken, Una caught again that strong scent of the sea that she had smelled as she rode down the King's Way. It came to her in a rush, overpowering the thousands of foreign spices and perfumes that misted the air of the market.

Odd, for she had grown up just a few miles from Sondhold Harbor, where tall ships sailed to and from far-off countries, and she had grown so used to the smell of the ocean that she no longer noticed it. But she caught it now, that whiff of wildness and salt and sun and storms, and she wondered how she could ever bear to sit long hours over textbooks or tapestry when that smell beckoned so?

Her father's voice brought her back to the present. "Has the Prince of Farthestshore placed you in charge of this bazaar?"

Sir Oeric answered, "The Prince himself has led us here. Many would not have dared come otherwise. He is near at hand, and you shall meet him anon."

"And in the meanwhile, you and your folk make yourselves at home upon my lawn?"

Sir Oeric bowed again. "It is an ancient and time-honored tradition, Your Majesty, that the people of the Far World visit the Near every twelve years so that we do not too soon forget one another. This very lawn has been kept clear and clean for that purpose. We apologize if we disturb you, but we of the Far World do not so swiftly forget agreements."

Fidel considered this a moment, his face quiet so that Una could not read it. "You're rather late, don't you think?" he said at last. "You have not come to Parumvir in the time of my father or that of his father. If I am not mistaken, it has been two hundred years at least since a Twelve-Year Market was recorded."

"But only twelve years as my folk count it."

"Then your years are much longer than ours."

"Shorter too, Your Majesty. And also wider and narrower, if you will." Sir Oeric smiled, and Una glimpsed sharp fangs. "Time is rather friendlier with the people of Faerie." Then his smile vanished, and his moon-wide eyes were serious. "We bring goodwill, Your Majesty, and wares to delight your kingdom. The Prince himself will assure you of this when you meet him. I know he wishes only to please you with our presence."

"I am eager to meet him."

"Until that time, Your Majesty, would your children like to explore the market?"

Fidel looked at Una and Felix. The prince was already scrambling from his horse, and Una was no less excited. "Very well—" he said, and the two were off like a shot.

All fear overwhelmed by curiosity, Una followed her brother deep into the gathered throng. The people of Sondhold were at first too enchanted with the strangeness surrounding them to take notice, but by and by they recognized the faces of their prince and princess and edged away so that Una and Felix had a circle of distance around them everywhere they went. As she trailed behind her lanky younger brother, inspecting the wares presented before her eyes, Una could not believe that only a short hour before she had been locked away in that den of a schoolroom. The world had taken on a sudden romance and adventure, and anything was possible.

A woman with feathers in her hair—whether she had put them there or they grew right from her head, Una could not guess—beckoned her near to look at fine cloth. "Woven from all the scents of summer," she whispered in a voice like wind-stirred trees. Una reached out to touch it, but the woman snatched it back. "For a price," she said. "Only for a price."

"The lady is not interested in such nonsense as yours!" said the vendor of the next stall over. He was a dwarf with a red face and slanting eyes that disappeared behind the folds of the most enormous grin Una had ever seen. "Step this way, damsel fair. Step this way and see what Malgril has to offer!"

She obeyed, and he pulled back a cloth to reveal silver statues of intricate work—little animals set with jewels for eyes. "Lovely," she said.

"But wait," said the dwarf. "Watch closely."

She smiled and looked again. The animal statues were of the most exquisite workmanship, the bodies engraved all over with delicate scrollwork. They were of creatures she did not know or beings she recognized only from stories: a cat with a woman's head, a snake with wings, a centaur, and a gryphon.

She blinked. Then she gasped.

The little figures had moved. Or had she imagined it? She blinked again, and sure enough, the woman-cat's tail twitched, the gryphon's mouth opened, the centaur turned his head.

"The scrollwork," said the dwarf, "was wrought by my brother, the great Julnril himself. These are powerful charms, like those of the ancient golems. Do they please your ladyship? Would she hold one in her hand?" The dwarf picked up the winged snake and held it out to her, but when Una looked at it, blinking fast, it seemed to writhe in his fingers. She stepped back, smiling again but shaking her head.

Felix's voice caught her attention. "Are you sure these are my size?"

"Standard size, my lord," someone replied, and Una turned to see Felix sitting before a cobbler's bench, shoving his foot into a boot made of old leather. It was a tough fit, and Felix made faces in his efforts to pull it on. The cobbler, rubbing his hands together, nodded and smiled and spoke encouragingly. With a final tug, Felix's heel slid into place, and the prince stood up. "And these are seven-league boots, are they? They kind of pinch—"

"Don't stamp your feet!" the cobbler cried, but too late.

Una yelped. Her brother had vanished.

Immediately the cobbler began ringing a bell and shouting at the top of his lungs, "Thief! Thief! Stop, thief!"

The next instant, huge Sir Oeric appeared, shaking a fist at the cobbler. "You shouldn't insist your customers try them on if you don't want them to run off!"

"He must pay! He must pay!" the cobbler insisted.

"Give me a pair, and I'll fetch him back."

"But, sir—"

"At once!"

King Fidel was there by now with the guardsmen, along with a great hustle of people, all shouting. "Which way did he go?" "He'll be halfway to the Red Desert by now!" "You certain he didn't step toward the sea?" "Fool boy, won't know enough to turn around and come back!"

"I'll get him for you, Your Majesty," Sir Oeric declared, pulling on another pair of the cobbler's special boots. Amazingly, they seemed to grow to fit his enormous feet. The next moment he vanished as well, and the yells of the market-goers doubled. The cobbler, grinning from ear to ear, was suddenly blessed with the best business he'd managed that day.

Una watched it all, laughing to herself and feeling a bit jealous of the fun Felix was having. She turned back to the silver statues but found herself instead looking into a pair of huge white eyes in a face like gray stone.

"My lady, would you have your fortune told?"

The man before her was the ugliest she had ever seen, uglier even than massive Sir Oeric. He was small, smaller still because he huddled into himself, and when he smiled he also displayed rows of sharp fangs. But then again—and here she frowned, for surely her eyes were lying to her one way or the other—he was also beautiful. Like the silver statues that moved only when she blinked, so this shrunken man seemed to change his face for hairbreadth moments, as though a veil wafted over his features and then away again. In those moments, he was beautiful.

He bowed to her. He was dressed in red robes, his head covered with a golden cap edged in intricate embroidery. With a sweep of a long sleeve, he indicated a tent, also red and worked with gold. Glittering beads hung over the opening, and all was dark inside.

"My lady," he said, "you are newly come of age; I read it in your eyes. Are you not curious to know what fates await you this day, this week, this month and year? Catch a glimpse perhaps of your future lover; see the smiles of your children? Torkom of Arpiar is no charlatan. Torkom of Arpiar knows the secrets, and he will tell you."

The ugliness faded more and more as he spoke, and his face grew ever more trustworthy. After all, had not Sir Oeric declared that the people of the market brought only goodwill? If she was going to trust him, a goblin, why should she not trust this beautiful being?

She followed him into the tent. The beads shimmered like so many stars as the tall man held them back, and she stepped into a room full of warm, rosy light. Curtains of gauzy fabric, embroidered and beaded, hung suspended from the center bar, and she had to push them aside as she stepped deeper and deeper into the tent. It was bigger inside than she could have guessed from looking at the outside; curiously it seemed to grow as she went. But the rose-colored light was beautiful, and the smell all around was too sweet for her to feel afraid.

At last Una pulled back a final drape, which felt like fine milkweed to her fingers, and found a low cushioned stool and a wooden box so dark that it looked black.

The fortune-teller appeared beside her and, taking her hand, gently led her to the stool. "Sit, lady, sit," he said. "Torkom will tell you your secrets. Trust him to know. Trust him to tell."

She trusted him. The sweet smell made it impossible not to. The perfume of the roses intoxicated her, though she did not recognize the scent. She allowed the man to seat her upon the cushioned stool. For a moment he remained bowed over her, holding her hand so close to his face she thought he might kiss it. But instead his large eyes inspected the ring on her finger.

"Such a lovely piece," he said. "Opals, yes?"

Breathing in roses, Una nodded. "My mother gave it to me. Before she died. I wear it always."

"Ah!" Torkom's smile grew. "Such a gift. A gift of the heart. Not one to part with too soon."

"I wear it always," Una repeated and drew her hand from his grasp. She put both her hands in her lap, covering her ring.

Torkom bowed himself away and knelt to open the dark wooden box.

Fascinated, Una watched him put his hands inside and lift out a strange object. At first she thought it was a shield, for it was the right size and shape, wide at the top and narrowed to a point at the bottom. But it was subtly concave, and the outside was black and rough, a natural roughness like rock. The inside, however, gleamed gold, and the air shimmered around it as if with heat.

Torkom, his teeth showing in what was almost a smile but might have been a grimace of pain, held the strange object out to Una. "Lady," he said, his voice hissing. "Lady, if you dare, behold your future. Look inside." He held the black shield out to her, and Una leaned forward.

Hot air rising from the golden surface hit her face. Inside she saw her own reflection, wincing but curious. Nothing more.

"Take it," Torkom whispered. She could not see him through the haze of heat and the glare of gold, but his voice worked like magic in her ear. "Take it, lady."

She put out her hands and took hold of the shield.

Heat seared up her fingers, through her arms, and wrapped about her head like a fiery vine. She gasped but could not take her eyes from the bright surface, which writhed suddenly like melted gold.

A face took shape. Black eyes ringed with flames, bone-white skin, and teeth like a snake's fangs. It looked at her, and she could not tear away her gaze. A voice flared in her mind, speaking not in words but in a language of heat and smoke that burned in her mind:

Beloved of my enemy! I played for you, didn't I? I played for you and won! Are you not the one I seek?

Una could not answer, could not break his gaze. The heat from the golden shield was like strong arms pulling her down, drawing her face closer and closer, and the fiery words rolled about her, a thunderstorm.